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Faith and Footpaths: Pilgrimage in Medieval Iberia
George Greenia College of William and Mary, [email protected]
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Recommended Citation Greenia, G. (2017). Faith and Footpaths: Pilgrimage in Medieval Iberia. Javier Muñoz-Basols, Laura Lonsdale, Manuel Delgado (Ed.), The Routledge Companion to Iberian Studies (pp. 16-26). Oxford, UK: Routledge. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/asbookchapters/30
This Book Chapter is brought to you for free and open access by the Arts and Sciences at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Arts & Sciences Book Chapters by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ~ C...... ffl C C, ffl The Routledge Companion to Iberian Studies
;: -:ited by Javier Munoz-Basols, Laura Lonsdale and Manuel Delgado
THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO IBERIAN STUDIES
Edited by Javier Mufioz-Basols, Laura Lonsdale and Manuel Delgado
I~ ~?io~!!:n~s~;up LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX 14 4.RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint ofthe Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 selection and editorial matter, Javier Mufioz-Basols, Laura Lonsdale and Manuel Delgado· individual chapters, the contributors The right of Javier Mufioz-Basols, Laura Lonsdale and Manuel Delgado to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the author for their individual chapters has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 198 8. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any fonn or by any electronic mechanical, or other means now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information torage or retrieval system, without perrni ion in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate name may be trademark or registered trademark , and ar u d only for identification and e planation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from th Briti h Library Library of Congres Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Mufioz-Basols, Javier editor. I Lon dale, Laura, editor. I Delgado, Manuel, 1944- editor. Title: The Routledge companion to Iberian tudie / edited by Javier Mufioz-Basols, Laura Lonsdale and Manuel Delgado. Description: London; w York: Routledge, 2017.1 Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifier : LC N 2016039697 I I 8 97 0415722 34 (hardba k : alk. paper) I I BN 9781315709 95 ( ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Iberian Peninsula- Civilization. I Iberian Peninsula Intellectual life. I Spain- Civilization. I pain- Intellectual life. I Portugal- Civilization. I Portugal- Intellectual life. I Iberians. Cla ification: LCC DP4 .R6 2017 I DD 946.00072 c23 LC record availabl at http ://lccn.loc.gov/2016039697 I BN: 978-0-415-72283-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-70989-5 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC CONTENTS
List offigures x zzz Notes on contributors xv Preface xxzz Acknowledgements xxv
PART I Medieval Iberia (eighth-fifteenth centuries) 1
History, politics and cultural studie 3
1 Festive traditions in Castile and Aragon in the late Middle Ages: ceremonies and symbols of power 5 Teofilo F. Ruiz
2 Faith and footpath : pilgrimage in medieval Iberia 16 George D. Greenia
3 Before the Reconquista: frontier relation in medieval Iberia, 718 to 1031 27 Jonathan Jarrett
4 The faiths of Abraham in medieval Iberia 41 John Edwards
5 Medieval Iberian cultures in contact: Iberian cultural production as translation and adaptation 50 Michelle M. Hamilton
Vll Contents
Literature and visual culture 63
6 Court and convent: senses and spirituality in Hispanic 1nedieval women's writing 65 Lesley K. Twomey
7 An interstitial history of medieval Iberian poetry 79 David A. Wacks
8 Revisiting the history of medieval translation in the Iberian Peninsula 93 Julio-Cesar Santoyo
9 Subjectivity and hermeneutics in medieval Iberia: the example of the Libra de buen amor 105 Robert Folger
10 Patrons, artists and audiences in the making of visual culture in medieval Iberia ( eleventh- thirteenth centuries) 118 Manuel Castifieiras
PART II The Iberian Peninsula in the Golden Age (sixteenth-seventeenth centuries) 135
History, politics and cultural studies 13 7
11 The early modern Iberian empires: emulation, alliance, competition 139 Alexander Ponsen and Antonio F eros
12 The Iberian Inquisitions in the sixteenth and eventeenth centuries: between coercion and accommodation 152 Helen Rawlings
13 The way behind and the way ahead: cartography and the tate of Spain in Cabeza De Vaca's Relacion 162 Kathryn M. Mayers
14 Purity and impurity of blood in early modern Iberia 173 Rachel L. Burk
15 The expulsion of the Moriscos: seven monumental paintings from the kingdom of Valencia 184 E. Michael Gerli
Vlll Contents
Literature and visual culture 201
16 The influence of Tirant lo Blanch on Golden Age Iberian authors 203 Rosa Navarro Duran
17 Women from the periphery in Don Quixote: ekphrasis versus counter-narrative 213 FrederickA. de Armas
18 "Para tiempos de veras / se ejercitan en las burlas:" some uses of rehearsal on the Golden Age stage 226 Jonathan Thacker
19 Iberian myths and American history in Balbuena's El Bernardo 238 Rodrigo Cacho Casal
20 Fallen idols? Vice and virtue in the iconography of Icarus and Phaethon 249 Richard Rabone
PART III The Iberian Peninsula in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries 265
History, politics and cultural studie 267
21 Hispano-Irish women writers of Spain's late Enlightenment period 269 Elizabeth Franklin Lewis
22 The end of empire and the birth of the modem nation, 1808 to 1868 282 Jesus Cruz
23 Carlists against liberali m: counter-revolution in the Iberian Peninsula during the nineteenth century 293 Jordi Canal
24 From patriotism to liberalism: political concepts in revolution 305 Javier Fernandez Sebastian
25 The modem city, 1850 to 1900: urban planning and culture in Barcelona, Madrid and Bilbao 319 Benjamin Fraser
lX Contents
Literature and visual culture 331
26 Building nations through words: Iberian identities in nineteenth- century literary historiography 333 Santiago Perez Isasi
27 The poetized peopling of nineteenth-century Spain/s 344 Ronald Puppo
28 Death and the crisis of representation in Narcis Oller's Lafebre d'or and Perez Gald6s's La de Bringas 357 Elisa Marti-Lopez
29 Performing the Peninsula: costumbrismo and the theatre of the eighteenth and ninete nth c nturi 368 Alberto Romero Ferrer
30 Painting in the Spani h Enlightenment: arti t at court and in the academy 3 80 Andrew Schulz
PART IV The Iberian Peninsula during the twentieth century 397
Hi tory, politic and cultural tudie 399
31 The idea of empire in Portugue e and Spani h life, 1890 to 1975 401 Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses
32 The fate of Spain's 'nationalism " during the Spani h Civil War, 1936 to 1939 413 George Esenwein
33 Beyond the nation: Spanish Civil War exile and the problem of Iberian cultural history 427 Sebastiaan Faber
34 Translation and censorship under Franco and Salazar: Irish theatre on Iberian stages 4 3 9 Raquel Merino-Alvarez
35 Unsettling the Iberian transitions to democracy of the 1970s 450 Pamela Radcliff
X Contents
Literature and visual culture 463
36 Bufiuel, Lorca, and Dali: a new tradition 465 Agustin Sanchez Vidal
37 Reclaiming the goods: rendering Spanish-language writing in Catalan and Galician 478 Maria Lifieira
38 Postwar Spanish fiction and the pursuit of Spanish reality 490 David K. Herzberger
39 Celluloid consensus: a comparative approach to film in Portugal during World War II 501 Isabel Capeloa Gil
40 (Inter)national spectres: cinema in mid-twentieth-century Iberia 516 Brad Epps
PARTY Iberian studies in the twenty-first century 529
History, politics and cultural studies 531
41 Pro-sovereignty politics in Catalonia and the Basque Country: are the two cases comparable? 533 Richard Gillespie
42 Going global: the international journey of Basque culture and literature 547 Mari Jose Olaziregi
43 Democracy, indignados, and the republican tradition in Spain 558 Jose Luis Marti
44 Mediatizing a past of conflict: the Spanish Civil War through TV documentaries in the twenty-first century 570 Enric Castello
45 A transmodem approach to Afro-Iberian literature 583 Cristian H. Ricci
Xl Contents
Literature and visual culture 597
46 Fennented tnemory: the inte1nperance of history in the narrative of Ramon Saizarbitoria 599 Joan Ramon Resina
47 Of treasure maps and dictionaries: searching for home in Carlota Fainberg, Bilbao-New York-Bilbao and L 'ultim patriarca 613 Laura Lonsdale
48 Rewriting the Iberian female detective: deciphering truth, memory, and identity in the twenty-fir t-century novel 626 Antonia L. Delgado-Pou t
49 Reflexivity in Iberian docu1nentary film 639 Samuel Amago
50 Human memory and the act of remembering in contemporary Iberian graphic novel 652 Javier Mufi.oz-Ba ol and Micaela Mufi.oz- alvo
Colour illustrations 671 Index 703
)01 FIGURES
10.1 Hercules. The Creation Tapestry, upper border, c. 1097. Museum of the Treasury of the Cathedral of Girona. © Catedral de Girona. 120 I 0.2 Detail of the warriors fighting. San Esteban de Almazorre (Huesca), mural paintings, apse, central register, c. 1131. © Antonio Garcia Omedes. 124 10.3 Patriarchal Cross of Anglesola (Lleida), anvers. Jerusalem, c. 1150- 70. © Ajuntament d' Anglesola. 126 10.4 Dispute and Arrest of Saint Catherine. Mural Paintings of Santa Caterina de la Seu d'Urgell, c. 1241-52. © MNAC-Museu Nacional d' Art de Catalunya. Barcelona. Calveras/Merida/Sagrista. 128 10.5 Saint James and his pilgrims. Santiago de Turegano (Segovia), apse, painted reliefs c. 1232. © Manuel Castifieira . 130 15 .1 Rebeli6n de las moriscos en la Muela de Cortes. Vincent Mestre, 1613. Valencia, Fundacion Bancaja, Permanent Collection. 189 15.2 Sandro Botticelli, The Abyss ofHell, c. 1485. Biblioteca Apostolica, Vatican. Wikimedia Commons. 190 15 .3 Detail, Sandro Botticelli, The Abyss ofHell, c. 1485. Biblioteca Apostolica, Vatican. Wikimedia Commons. 190 15.4 Detail, Rebeli6n de los moriscos en la Sierra de Laguar. Jeronimo Espinosa, 1612- 13. Valencia, Fundacion Bancaja Permanent Collection. 191 15.5 Detail, Rebeli6n de los moriscos en la Sierra de Laguar. Jeronimo Espinosa, 1612- 13. Valencia, Fundacion Bancaj a, Permanent Collection. 192 15.6 Detail, Desembarco de los moriscos en el Puerto de Oran. Vicent Mestre, 1613. Valencia, Fundacion Bancaja, Permanent Collection. 192 15. 7 Detail, Embarque de las moriscos en el Puerto de Denia. Vincent Mestre, 1612- 13. Valencia, Fundacion Bancaja, Permanent Collection. 193 15_.8 Embarque de los moriscos en el Puerto de Alicante. Pere Oromig and Francisco Peralta, 1612- 13. Valencia, Private Collection. 194 15 .9 Embarque de las moriscos del Grau de Valencia. Pere Oromig, 1612- 13. Valencia, Fundacion Bancaja, Permanent Collection. 195 15 .10 Detail, Embarque de los moriscos del Grau de Valencia. Pere Oromig, 1612-13. Valencia, Fundacion Bancaja, Permanent Collection. 196
Xlll 2 FAITH AND FOOTPATHS Pilgrimage in medieval Iberia
George D. Greenia
Occasionally over the centuries an incident occurs that shifts a center of gravity and draws the attention and energy of formerly disinterested bystanders. In the opening decades of the ninth cen tury, an abandoned Roman mausoleum in remote northwest Spain was proclaimed the resting place of the Apostle St. James the Greater, the only original companion of Jesus buried in Europe other than Peter and Paul in Rome. All three were martyred for the faith, but the celebrated presence of the two greatest princes of the Church in a single city that subsequently became the home of a continuous line of successors to Peter - and interpreters of Paul - had long given Rome the edge. Yet Jame wa the fir t to hed hi blood, a Son of Thunder who e fame came to muffle some of the official voice booming from central Italy. Pilgrim tarted arriving in Compostela first from hardscrabble Galicia, then from ambitiou A turia , and oon from all the embattled northern Iberian realms. Eventually they came from the whole of Christendom. Compostela 's hillside cemetery prompted its earliest neighboring prelate to relocate his diocesan see in order to hover over his most precious shrine. The freshly repositioned bishopric grew into a metro politan see that rivaled Toledo and almost deprived that legendary Visigothic capital of its pri macy over all Iberia. It was well served by a serie of resourceful and well-connected bishops, and succeeded in becoming the most appealing draw of any holy place among the Christian kingdoms of the Peninsula, providing a target for Moorish raiders as well as motivation to counterattack them. It also served as a pretext to levy an homage tribute on all the grateful lands whose byways led to Compostela. Never famous as a destination for cures, apparitions or miracles, the sanctuary of Santiago did trigger wondrous economic growth, a new jostling of disparate cultures among its visitors, and fresh engines of art and architecture that still awe pilgrims today (Ashley and Deegan 2009). The story of Santiago is that of a shrine whose ponderous stature ignited the wrath of Muslims, the envy of neighbors, and the emulation of scattered holy places which could point onward to Compostela. In one way or another, every one redefined themselves as travelers on the road to St. James.
Finding the tomb
James the Elder, one of Jesus's closest disciples, was beheaded by Herod Agrippa in 44 CE, the first of the Twelve to be martyred according to the Acts of the Apostles. Nothing is reported in
16 Pilgrimage in medieval Iberia
Christian scriptures or even by the earliest Church Fathers as to his remains, but by the ninth century a powerful myth had arisen that would persuade not a few Christians and Muslims that his supposed tomb site was in the far western anchor of the Latin Imperium. As the year 1000 approached, James was invested with apocalyptic significance. The hymns and com mentaries of the Asturian monk Beatus de Liebana embraced the Book of Revelation, the last entry in the Christian scriptures and a favorite ofbeliever_s in times of desperation like those in Muslim-occupied Spain. "Their" James bracketed salvation history for Iberia because after the Resurrection he had come to the ends of the world to preach a good news destined to triumph after savage trials. Northwestern Spain, the forested domain of Celts and Sueves, eventually became a counterweight to distant Jerusalem across the fulcrum that was Rome, and pilgrims surged toward each axis of this fateful spiritual beam (Webb 1999). The earliest wisps of the Jacobean legend styled him an early missionary to these distant provinces of Imperial Rome in the interval between the crucifixion of Jesus and James's own martyrdom. Accounts which eventually coalesced into the authoritative Vita in the twelfth century Codex Calixtinus ( otherwise known as the Liber Sancti Jacobi) declared that his erstwhile evangelization was fruitless, and so disheartening that even the apostle needed a consoling apparition by the Virgin Mary to bolster his spirits. A tradition grew that she appeared to him in Zaragoza on a pillar, launching a sizeable cult of its own focused on a jasper pedestal that survives to this day and is still revered by pilgrims to that shrine. James returned to Jerusalem to meet his death, but further legend had it that his disciples gathered the head and body and rather miraculously sailed back to the faraway Iberian Atlantic coast where he was interred and then forgotten. His posthumous success as an evangelizer began in the 820s or 830s CE when one Pelayo, a pious hermit or monk, saw a play of lights floating above a wooded hillside not far from the port of Padron and reported his discovery to the local bishop, Theodomir (ca. 819- 847 CE). Moved by selfless piety - or sensing an opportunity to repo ition his diocese within the only continuous power structure known in Christian Europe - Theodomir validated the discovery as the very tomb containing the remains of St. James and induced king Alfonso II of Asturias to become a patron. The long-abandoned Roman cemetery overgrown by a pine grove was rechristened in the saint's name, as Sanctus Jacobus (Saint Jacob, or James) morphed into Sancti Yagus, Santi Yagtie, and simply Santiago. The Compo tela part came shortly afterward, probably from composita tel/us (groomed plot of land) although the appeal of the folk etymol ogy of campus stellarum (field of stars) proved irresi tible. Although there were earlier tomb cults in Iberia such as those of Eulalia of Merida and Emilianus (Spanish San Millan) of Castile, and collective sites such as the Camara Santa in Oviedo, Santiago towered above them and served as something of a template and terminus for most of the medieval Iberian sacred circuits whose shrine sites became a rosary of venerated and hospitable stopping points. The rise of pan-European Marian devotions in the thirteenth century prompted the appearance of a torrent of new sightings of the Virgin in Spain as well, often leaving behind iconic images of herself at Najera, Villalcazar de Sirga, and Ponferrada along the French route, and at Monserrat and other places scattered in territories reconquered from the resident Muslim population. (Not a few historians assume that these apparitions were well-timed wonders that encouraged resettlement of underpopulated frontier towns.) The newer shrines tended to honor Mary's apparitions or merely places of local devotion that spon sored annual feast day treks called romerias. Almost none were curative shrines. Santiago de Compostela became something of an antique model of the venerated tomb long after the age of martyrs had passed, and a major goal of long-distance pilgrimage.
17 George D. Greenia
The faces of St. James The image of St. James became ubiquitous. He never lost his canonical representation as a preaching apostle toting a book representing the Gospel proclamation. But he rapidly acquired new attributes as himself a pilgrim with the recognizable attire and equipment of any traveler to Compostela. The earliest (1125-1150 CE) representation of "Santiago peregrino," affixed to the church of Santa Marta de Tera in Zamora, displays the crucial accessories: a walking staff, a traveler's satchel, and the soon-to-be-inescapable scallop shell. The formalities of high Romanesque sculpture are visible in the plaited beard and sheer, almost gauzy drapery, but this James has snapped his head to the left and raises an oddly inflated left hand in apostolic admonition and warning; his eyes are protruding with energy and he even bares his teeth as he speaks. John K. Moore provides the best description of the statue and its message:
He has the matted hair of a desert prophet, the full but fashionable beard of a court sage, and the paunch of an established authority who knows his throw weight. This is the anti-warrior, armed with his voice, speaking with his arms, head pivoted to take in his audience. The extremities of head and hand are inflated with the mighty bel lowing from within. This man is on a mission, something the travel gear underscores, positioning James not on a stage but in motion across a landmass he intends to make echo. (2014, 35)
Tue James of Santa Marta is on the cusp of transformation from preacher to pilgrim, urging his devotees onward as both. Although the Santa Marta statue was produced on-site, it anticipates the French style which esteemed Santiago as the icon for his pilgrimage. All the images of St. James produced in France after the twelfth century, as well a the most influential models in the di tinctive French style imported into Spain, are in agreement on the image of the saint those pilgrims sought to visit: a resolute walking sojourner, just like the pilgrims themselves. (See, for example, the image of Santiago Beltza in Puente la Reina, or any one of the dozens now gathered in the Museo das Peregrinaci6ns in Santiago.) These caminante (walker) images mostly carved in Spain demonstrate that the cultic representation of St. James, the di play figure that invited the observer to prayer, was that of the traveler. Pilgrims prayed to their pilgrim patron, and not to the apostle warrior who came later. The now definitive representation of James from around the 1180s was completed for the Portico de la Gloria as part of the exterior west fac;ade in Santiago itself. The saint is perched on a shallow throne and given unique centrality on the central door colu1nn right beneath the matching posture of the Christ risen in glory a few feet above him:
He is hieratic, elevated, meeting no one's gaze except God's. He holds his attributes with a light touch because they are icons and not serviceable tools. The scroll is too small to contain anything substantive, the staff a dainty symbol of someone already in charge. Most of all he's silent, calm, immobilized by the column against his back. (Moore 2014, 36)
This is the image that has greeted pilgrims for more than 800 years and is by far the most commonly reproduced likeness of the saint. It became the authoritative model for most of the derivative imagery that radiated back out from Santiago between the thirteenth and :fifteenth
18 Pilgrimage in medieval Iberia centuries. The Portico de la Gloria is the "Sistine Chapel" of Romanesque statuary and the then polychromed James, head ablaze with a jeweled nimbus, pressed itself into the memory of his devotees.
Celebration and ambition Bishop Theodomir was the bold visionary who seized on the discovery of the tomb and even moved his diocesan see from Iria Flavia on the Galician coast to that sparsely populated hill side in the interior and launched the first building projects there, first a free-standing chap laincy, then a small neighboring monastery, then a full architectural structure that served as a sacred envelope for the tomb. The Roman mausoleum above ground was demolished in favor of a superimposed sanctuary with an altar, and century by century laborious construction alter nated with even more laborious engineering, earthworks, and the enormous task of taming the heaving shoulders of granite just beneath the Spanish soil (Suarez Otero 2014). And even poor pilgrims played their part. Those without coins to offer or wax candles to light during their night vigils and song fests picked up limestone from Triacastela and carried that burden for a whole week before contributing their gift to help make mortar for the endless edifices com missioned by delirious clerics. Even at its height in the Middle Ages, there were no more than a few thousand permanent residents in Santiago. Willing pilgrims who donated their muscle and goodwill therefore made up a sizeable portion of the work force that built the vast monuments erected during that period along the endless westward path. Many of those building projects were pilgrim hos tels intended for them, and oddly the cathedral in Santiago was too. Those permitted to pray through the night within the church itself could apparently number in the hundreds or even thousands. Italians and Germans and Frenchmen settled in companionable throngs, each in their encampment on the tribune level of the great Romanesque edifice and mustered com peting choruses of hymns to St. James in their native tongue. At times those crowds produced unhappy consequences: in the early thirteenth century, for example, some aggressively jostling pilgrims turned violent and committed murder; the cathedral was shuttered by the homicide until it could be rededicated. In the following century, perhaps prompted by successive waves of plague - or at any rate overripe and under-washed travelers - the relentless stream of daily arrivals helped inaugurate the age of the botafumeiro, a giant censer attached to the ceiling of the transept in order to symbolize the cloud of prayers arising from the pilgrims, and inciden tally mask their odor. As a site of visitation its success would soon exceed Theodomir 's wildest dreams. But it was the more ambitiou and internationally avvy diplomat bi hop Diego Gelmirez (1069- 1149) who drove the cult of St. James, and its potential pilgrim allure, to heights unprec edented in the Latin West. Only Martin of Tours and Thomas Becket in the Middle Ages, and Lourdes and Fatima in the modern era, can compare with Santiago as national shrines with international appeal. The traditional capital ofVisigothic Spain had been Toledo, a centrally located urban com plex on a major river and well connected by roadways to the surrounding peninsula. It was retaken from the Moors in 1085, a huge psychological boost for the Christian Reconquest, and once the native Mozarabic liturgy was replaced by the standard Roman rite in 1086, its prelate enjoyed restored status as the Primate of all Catholic Iberia, a decisive reincorporation of the peninsula into Western Christendom and its crusading fervors. But Toledo had no cult that could rival the draw of the tomb of James in the far northwest, no feeder routes lined with
19 George D. Greenia
attractive secondary shrines, and no relentless stream of foreign visitors with a high sense of agency. And for centuries Toledo sat on the dge of an active war zone. Diego Gelmirez capitalized on the growing sway of Santiago in church affairs. Already a papal legate and oon the fir t archbi hop of Santiago, G lmirez aw the pilgrimage route as a potential a11ery to Rome. He campaigned for hi see to become the head of the Spanish church, authoring the major history of his own deeds, the Historia compostelana (covering the year 1100- 1139, in a fine modem edition by Plaque Rey 1994). Gelmirez al o inaugurated the building of the new Romanesque cath dral d dicated po thumou ly in 1213 which is the unforgettable edifice visitors enter today. Another epi copal diplomat and hi torian Rod1igo Jimenez de Rada of Toledo (1170- 1247), finally deflected papal validation of Santiago' claim to lead the Spanish Church, but neither he nor mighty Toledo ever managed to eclipse the pull of the bodily remains of an apostle for a relic-crazed 1nedieval Europe (Marquez Villanueva 2004, 255- 268; see also the hi torical urvey of Moralejo and Lopez Al ina 1993 and of Singul 2009).
Tombs and heroes Tomb cults thrived in the Middle Ages whether the vi itor sought saints or epic heroes. French scholar including Ga ton Pari ( l 839- 1903) and Jo ph B '
Dogged travelers The physical trail themselves deserve their place in the hi tory of European cultural traffic. Santiago de Compo tela as a traveler' de tination helped define named land route both in ide of and well beyond Iberia, something neither Jerusale1n nor Rome could claim. All roads led to Rome and pilgrims si1nply took to the highways used by merchants and mercenaries, abbots
20 Pilgrimage in medieval Iberia and armies. Visitors to the tombs of Peter and Paul faced a daunting patchwork of diffident principalities and scant infrastructure dedicated to their care. Overland routes to Jerusalem for their part were often trackless paths through indifferent or hostile wilderness, and the nearly inevitable sea routes were also commercial ones, with pilgrims simply cargo for the merchant marine. Santiago beckoned with well-known highways or caminos departing from Paris, Tours, V ezelay, Aries~ Le Puy-en-Velay and elsewhere in France; from the Germanic heartland; and from the ports of Ireland, England and the Baltic. Inside the Spanish realms the main route was the "Camino frances" stretching from Ron cesvalles westward to Santiago, but there were various others, including the early "Camino primitivo" from Oviedo, the English-Irish-Nordic Route ("Camino ingles") from Ferrol or La Corufia, the Northern or Cantabrian Coastal trail, the "Via de la Plata" up from Seville, and scores of minor feeder routes that joined the main pathways. These medieval thoroughfares made good use of surviving Roman roads and when nec essary, cattle paths, building an infrastructure that opened up a persistently underpopulated interior and allowed the penetration of international traffic and ideas. A quip long attributed to Goethe pronounced that pilgrimage gave birth to Europe and Christendom was its mother tongue. The core notion at least has clear merit. In an age before citizenship that could be documented by anything other than one's native dialect, being a pilgrim granted a sort of pan-European identity that was itself both membership in a shared community of faith and a universal safe conduct through foreign lands. It also made the pilgrim worthy of charity and shelter, and imposed a stem expectation that locals would provide both to these strangers. Even when pilgrims and their hosts routinely failed to live up to the terms of their idealized relationship, those ideals were universally acknowledged and made borders and frontiers far more porous at every level of society. Medieval pilgrimage was not always a peaceful affair, and could not be. No cross-country traveler set out across unknown territories naively unarmed against wolves, dogs or thieves. Leaving home was dangerous enough, and the most common feature of the highways of faith after churches, chapels and monasteries were cemeteries. It can only be an educated guess, but perhaps 10% to 15% of all long-distance travelers never made it home again. While some chose to resettle elsewhere, not a few fell victim to misadventures disease and accident. It was easy enough to die of thirst, hunger or exposure. And the quip is shopworn but true enough that the rich had doctors and the poor had pilgrimage which meant that setting out for a major shrine entailed surrounding oneself with a concentrated display of human suffering. Pilgrim hostels and hospitals - often nearly interchangeable - were intended as places of charity but ended up more as vectors for disease than as centers of sanitation. The approach to most major towns in medieval Spain and elsewhere was often signaled by a St. Lazarus chapel for lepers (Martinez Garcia 1993). The majority of pilgrim in Spain were defen ively armed even though officially Spain was considered occupied Christian territory and warriors intent on any combination of faith, valor and plunder qualified a crusader and therefore armed themselves offensively. But unlike the Holy Land, Spain saw no regular influx of combative foreigners seeking to wrest sacred sites from enemy hands, nor foreign visitors hoping to gain access to holy landmarks sequestered within hostile hands. Despite this, one of the most persistent, and currently embarrassing depictions of Santiago is as Matamoros, the Moor Slayer (Raulston 2008). Propagandists for military triumphalism, mostly French revisionist historians of the period, turned Santiago into a mounted warrior with attributes of a white horse, a brandished sword, and defeated Muslim foes sprawled before him with their decapitated, turbaned heads scattered on the ground. So embedded did this image
21 George D. Greellia
become that when conquistadors exported their violent ways to the New World, St. James promptly became a Mataindios (Slayer of Indians) and - returning the compliment in the full ness of time - during the wars of Latin American independence he became a Mataespanoles (Slayer of Spaniards). The tandard reading of these images in more recent centuries affirmed that St. James was reassigned to also be the patron of the Reconquista of Moorish Spain. Francisco Marquez Villanueva rejects this interpretation, showing that the Matamoros that originated in the north along the pilgrim trail only arose well after those avenues were safely contained deep in Christian lands. Santiago was deployed as an icon of a struggle already won for pilgrims and as a patriotic hero, but not an inspiration for the Reconquista itself. The paths of pilgrimage in medieval Spain- before there was a Spain, of course, when the Iberian lands comprised separate ethnic and dynastic kingdoms - are saturated with pilgrim lore and emblazoned with pilgrim art. The preferred iconography has proven the most dura ble mark of the travelers who created and canonized these routes, starting with the ubiqui tous scallop shell. The humble vieira is supposed to represent the trek that takes the traveler all the way to the sea. It may have begun as a pagan fertility symbol suggestive of the mans veneris, and scallop hell with perforated flange clearly intended as wearable emblems of some sort have been found in Iberian pre-Christian burials far from any medieval pilgrimage route. The lucrative sale of scallop shells within Santiago itself was a closed market which admitted no competition with cathedral-sponsored vendors. It was the preferred accessory of all classes of devotees of St. James and deluxe versions appeared in precious metals and carved jet, a type of soft coal which can be polished to a durable luster. Once the association with the journey to Compostela was cemented, however, the scallop shell became the badge worn from the outset of the trip. Utility items such as the dried gourd (used as a canteen) sur rendered their identity to the pilgrim user and appear almost nowhere in medieval art except as part of a sacred walker's gear. The shoulder cape, the walking staff, the broad-brimmed felt hat good for rain or sun, and the modest satchel slung from a shoulder strap constituted the most stable costume known in the medieval world except for the monastic habits of those who often never traveled at all (for essays on life in the medieval city of Santiago see Anton Vilasanchez and Tato Castifieira 2000).
Writing about pilgrimage Pilgrimage gppears relatively rarely in the literary record. The Latin Codex Calixtinus, the most celebrated volume on the saint, is a product of clerical encyclopedists at both extremes of the French trails (Marquez Villanueva 2004, 165- 179). The components of the Codex were assembled in the mid-twelfth century by French propagandists selecting from Spanish raw materials to build a sort of "Summa Jacobea." The given name of the collection comes from the spurious claim that it was authorized by Pope Calixtus II, an assiduous ally of Diego Gelmirez. The editors included an account of the history of the saint's translatio and inventio, that is, the arrival of James 's body in ancient Galicia and its discovery centuries later, followed by complex sermon materials encouraging devotion to the saint. To further excite the faithful, yet another section pulls together an ample collection of miracle stories (Coffey et al. 1996). It is this section that stretches the book's purview back along the trails where James worked his miracles for those approaching his tomb. The fourth section is the most fanciful, a trumpet blast of Latin prose recounting Char le1nagne's mighty exploits in Iberia, apparently designed to tickle the Cluniac monks from France and the laymen who revered them. Both groups were promoting the pilgrimage to St. James as they extended their influence along this soft frontier. The terrain and tribal disputes
22 Pilgrimage in medieval Iberia
among Basques, N avarrese, Aragonese, and others may have been irksome to walkers and opportunistic French nobles, but the ecclesiastical avenue was becoming well populated with friendly bishops and abbots who had relocated from north of the Pyrenees. Not to mention thousands of common folk who could count on a friendly welcome from French expatriates who stamped their name on a whole chain of Villafrancos, or French Towns, and even chris tened for themselves a major artery adjacent to the very cathedral in Santiago: the Rua dos francos, where French influence is just as visible in the 'rua' part as in the 'francos.' The fifth book of the Codex Calixtinus is an out-and-out first-hand report written by an opin ionated French cleric, one Aymari Picaud, writing quite intentionally for his countrymen. The now canonized Pilgrim s Guide has become famou as the first true travel guide, describing the various routes that converge on the eponymous French Route in Puente la Reina, Navarre, and then march on to Santiago. He catalogs the journey's dangers, material comforts and opportunities for spiritual satisfactions such as visiting the not-to-be-missed tombs of French saints. There is a haughty disapproval of most natives of Iberia until one reaches Galicia when they start to resem ble their Gallic neighbors. This fifth book was unmistakably drafted by a rather diffident French man who carefully elaborated on his successful trek because the most complete description of all is of the cathedral in Santiago with its artistic glories and splendid services. Any Spanish partici pation in this ambitious travelogue is uncertain because the descriptions are all outsider views, the brochure-worthy hype written for potential visitors and not the report of anyone who made his own unique visit, much less the insider's "peek behind the curtain" that Spanish contributors could have supplied. The numerous hymns spliced into various parts of the princeps copy of the Codex Calixtinus are meant for Jacobean celebrations either in Compostela itself or in anticipa tion of arrival there, and not a few of tho e melodie and lyric were fir t compo ed in France. Although a number of later copies derived from the earliest Codex Calixtinus, which is still zealously treasured in Santiago, are extant, none are as elaborately produced or penetrated much into popular lore. This was an anthology for the clerical elite who could draw on most of its contents for composing their own sermons or for devotional reading in French monastic foundations along the main pilgrimage route (Reilly 1993). A a tand-alone compo ition, the Pseudo-Turpin history about Charlemagne and Roland was a tremendous literary success, but mostly outside of Spain. The Pilgrims Guide in Book Five has become a classic only in the modern era, imposing itself on contemporary dreams of the Middle Ages and scripting jour neys that cannot replicate the idealized composite attributed to Aymari Picaud. Marquez Villanueva (2004 165- 179) regards the Codex Calixtinus as a Trojan horse full of French monks. While Bishop Gelmirez himself may have commissioned components of the collection, it seems to have been given it final editorial tamp ometime before 1173 CE and well north of the Pyrenees. The cleric ofCluny enjoyed a widening phere of influence among the ruling noble warrior class in central France, and the monks only encountered serious resist ance when bartering with Rome. The Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle mentioned previously spins an enthusiastic tale of Charlemagne's expedition to establish a safe path through Spain so that foreign travelers could reach the tomb of the apostle. But this account presents a Spain devoid of Spaniards. The Muslim enemy is the only Iberian resident worth talking about and fighting him is the responsibility of the apparently sole challenger Islam met south of the Pyrenees, namely the French. The Carolingian expeditionary adventure is a wholesale historical fiction - the real Charlemagne barely engaged in skirmishes beyond his southern frontier. The Pseudo Turpin also happily ignores any report of native Christian Spaniards creating and defending their own kingdoms (Barriero Rivas 1997). They do not even merit a footnote as incidental partners to the French. This Trojan horse spills out its agents and its ink over Iberia in the cause of further Frankish incursions, ostensibly as spiritual tourism secured by French feats of arms.
23 George D. Greenia
Major works in the Iberian vernaculars, by contrast, reference the Camino de Santiago as pa1i of their native backdrop usually without dwelling on it. When charging Moorish and Christian forces clash in the Cantar de mio Cid (probably composed in 1207), "Some shout Mahomat, and others Saint James," but the reference hardly seems religious. The Poema de Fernan Gonzalez (mid-thirteenth century) plays out much of its epic adventure along the ver tex of the French Route on either side of Burgos but with no reference to anyone else on the trail othe_r than the boisterous combatants of the plotline. Even Cervantes in his Don Quixote (1605 and 1615), a work that loves to recall a lost past, finds little use in summoning pilgrims as extras for his social landscapes. The folk tradition is where pilgrimage really begins to gain traction. Folk sayings allude to the incessant passers-by slogging on towards Santiago, and innumerable legends and ballads recount their chance adventures. In the plastic arts, devotional objects 1nade for pilgrims are among the most common grave goods found throughout Europe, the treasured possessions of sacred travelers, men and women who wanted to arrive before the heavenly throne dressed in the costume and wearing the physical tokens of their earnest efforts to reach out to God while they were still on earth.
Piety and opportunism Clerical and folk compositions may also be supplemented with legal texts. Not all pilgrims were saints, and many of those selling them goods and ervices fleeced the credulous. The early church fathers mistrusted pilgrimage in general because of its multiple external and inter nal abuses. Not a few greedy bystanders saw how they could profiteer from excesses of piety and misdirected belief, extracting donations and selling false relics. Monumental churches and monasteries were constructed and elaborate decorations ordered. Among the wardens of hospitals and charitable refuges, hospitality fatigue could set in all too quickly. Travelers too, far from the restraints of village life and regular access to their legitimate sex partner, took advantage of the anonymity of foreign settings to sample foreign pleasures. Thousands of pil grims poured into Spain to fulfill a sentence in1po ed for violent crimes that outraged a whole community. Condemning an offender to a hazardous journey dampened retaliatory violence between families and clans and transferred punishment from vengeful peers to an inscrutable God. But it also meant that pilgrims as a class could provoke a certain measure of mistrust. And in addition to the truly cri1ninal were unspiritual wanderers, shameless freeloaders, vaga bonds, opportunists, and downright flimflam artists (Arribas Briones 1993). The gamut of motives for pilgrimage is transparent in the totalizing catalogue of pilgri1ns in the Liber Sancti Jacobi. The opening sermon on the Apostle St. James lays out the panorama for us:
The poor go there, and so do the rich, criminals, knights, princes, rulers, the blind and lame, the mighty, the lords, the scions of great families, bishops and abbots, some barefoot, others penniless, others loaded with irons as a sign of their penance. ( Liber Sancti Jacobi, Book I, Chapter 17)
Yet at times something troubling underlies the motives of certain pilgrims, a presumption of commensurability: that the pilgrimage undertaken will necessarily cancel the offense commit ted or earn the favor requested. Measuring spiritual matters was one of the most persistent pro jects of the Church in medieval times, and included not only penances but also benefits such as indulgences earned through the performance of pious acts. Cyrille Vogel's French phrase penitance tarifee ("tariffed penance") aptly conveys the calculations applied to reforming
24 Pilgrimage in medieval Iberia one's life and conduct (Vazquez de Parga 1948). The human decision that selected pilgrimage as a seemly expression of piety has clearly made one attempt at devising appropriate measures of devotion, with the unknown hazards of the road left in the hands of God. This implies the penitential nature of all pilgrimage travel: the inevitable sacrifices, discomforts, vulnerability, inconvenience and indignities that are part of the experience sought and not just incidental to the trip. This sort of computation of grace and expiation ~lso shows a fair measure of calcula tion on the part of Church authorities who could choose from any number of shrine sites both near and far as the offense warranted. But calibrated schemes for earning grace, or for expia tion of earthly sins by present suffering, or for gaining indulgences through voluntary pious works would lead to a commodification of grace that proved disastrous for the Church and eventually crippling for the pilgrimage experience. Bartering the temporal for benefits eternal will never find a yardstick to persuade everyone. By the end of the Middle Ages in Spain and elsewhere, the personalized, psychologi cal dimensions of pilgrimage were undermined by the steady commodification of diverse forms of civil compensation and remission of sins. Just as murder could be redeemed by payment of wergeld, so other crimes normally punished with a judicial pilgrimage could be expiated by a fixed sum of money or by underwriting the cost of a substitute pilgrim who made the trip on commission. The piritual benefits of a pilgrimage themselves came to be a commodity of transferable value, so a sinner might be required to perform two pilgrimages, one in punishment for a murder, say, and a second trip whose graces were formally reassigned as compensation to the aggrieved family. Thousands of these surro gate arrangements were apparently made and local records throughout Europe, including faraway northern ranges such as Germany and Scandinavian countries, give witness to the practice and Santiago was a frequently named destination. This practice quickly spread in the fourteenth and fifteenth centurie to te tamentary beque t which obliged heir to perform a pilgrimage for the sake of the soul of the deceased, as a condition of receiving their inheritance. These replacement pilgrims became so common in Iberia itself that a Spanish proverb held that ' en vida o muerte, todos han de ir a Santiago" ( 'In life or in death, everyone ends up going to Santiago').
Movement becomes myth Pilgrimages of all sort and to diver e de tination have become firmly embedded in the national Spanish myth. Annual romerias help define the cycle of village and even urban life, their colorful traditions a bond for locals and a draw for tourists whether it be the often raucous parade to the Virgen del Rocio in the province of Huelva or the elaborate hyper charged piety of the thousands of costumed young people who take part in the Holy Week procession in Seville, and the hundreds of thousands of observers who pour into town to take in the spectacle. But the most successful and massive ofall remnants ofmedieval pilgrimage in Spain is clear1 y the Camino de Santiago, reanimated in the late twentieth century and every year attracting more than 300,000 mostly earnest walkers, and millions more re pectful visitors to Com postela. International attention and frank admiration has successfully expanded the Camino's pilgrim catchment across the globe, and it has become not only an economic boon to a strug gling economy, but also a vehicle for promoting sympathy for Spanish traditions and honoring Spain's capacity for disinterested hospitality. All tourism promises contact with the authentic Other through costumes, food, social practices and demonstrations of belief. The additional attraction of pilgrimage lies in the opportunity which it offers for discovering a more authentic
25 George D. Green ia
self, and the modem Camino de Santiago seems to fulfill for many the experience sought by centuries of travelers to Compostela.
Works cited
Anton Vilasanchez, Maria A. and Jose Luis Tato Ca tifieira. 2000. Santiago de Compo tel a: ciudad y per egrino. Actas de! V Congreso Internacional de E tudios Xacobeo . Santiago de Compostela: Xunta de Galicia. Arribas Briones, Pablo. 1993. Picaros y picare ca en el camino de Santiago. Burgos: Ediciones Aldecoa. Ashley, Kathleen and Marilyn Deegan. 2009. Being a Pilgrim. Art and Ritual on the Medieval Routes to Santiago. Burlington, VT: Lund Humphries. Barriero Rivas, Jose Luis. 1997. Lafunci6n politica de los caminos de peregrinaci6n en la Europa medi eval. Estudio de! Camino de Santiago. Madrid: Tecno . Coffey, Thomas F., Linda Kay Davidson, and Maryjane Dunn ds. 1996. The Miracle of Saint Jame : Translations from the Liber sancti Jacobi. New York: Italica Pre . Falque Rey, Emma, ed. 1994. Hi toria Compostelana. Madrid: Akal. Marquez Villanueva, Francisco. 2004. Santiago: trayectoria de un mito. Barcelona: Edicions Bellaterra. Martinez Garcia, Luis. 1993. "La asistencia ho pitalaria a lo p regrino en Castilla y Leon durante la Edad Media." In Vida y peregrinaci6n, edit d by Reyna Pa tor, 57- 69. Madrid: El eta. Moore, John Kitchen, Jr. 2014. 'Santiago' Sinister Hand: Hybrid Identity in the Statue of Saint James the Greater at Santa Marta de Tera." Peregrination : Journal of Medi val Art & A~ hit cture 6 (4): 31 - 62. Moralejo, Serafin and Fernando Lopez Al ina. 1993. Santiago, camino de Europa. CZ1lto y cultllra en la peregrinaci6n a Santiago de Compo tela. antiago de ompo tela: Xunta d Galicia. Raulston, Stephen B. 2008. "The Harmony of taff and word: How Medieval Thinkers Saw Santiago Peregrino and Matamoros." La cor6nica 36 (2): 345- 368. Reilly, Bernard F. 1993 . The Medieval Spains. ambridge: Cambridg Univer ity Press. Singul, Francisco. 2009. El Camino de Santiago. Cllllura y pen amiento. A Corufia: Bolanda. Suarez Otero, Jose. 2014. "Locus Iacobi. Origenes de un santuario de peregrinaci6n." PhD diss., Univer sidad de Santiago. Vazquez de Parga, Luis. 1948. "Capitulo VII. La peregrinaci6n forzada." In Las peregrinacione a San tiago de Compostela, edited by Lui Vazquez de Parga, Jose Maria Lacarra, and Juan Uria Riu, vol. 1, 155- 167. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Inv tigacion i ntifica . Webb, Diana. 1999. PUgrims and Pilgrimage in the Medieval We t. New York: t. Martin' Pre s.
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